1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to management apparatuses utilizing network communication, control method, and storage medium, and in particular, relates to a management apparatus, in which instructions to a managed apparatus that remotely manages devices are processed through a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, maintenance systems managing devices at a customer location through a network from a management server have been known. For example, a conventional maintenance system performs device status acquisition and makes changes in various device settings, etc. In such a case, the management server becomes the initiator which, e.g. accesses a device through an Internet connection and performs the above-mentioned various types of processing.
With the spread of the Internet, etc., security technology has been enhanced and in some cases the way conventional maintenance systems work has resulted in inconveniences. For instance, firewalls have proved an impediment to spontaneous access to customer devices from a management server on the Internet. The problem arising in such environments is the inability to perform sufficient maintenance.
To solve this problem, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-082792 discloses a system, in which a relay server is provided between a management server and a managed apparatus. In this system, commands issued by the management server are stored in a specific folder on the relay server, the managed apparatus executes monitoring for commands being stored in the specific folder and, if commands are stored in the specific folder, acquires and executes the commands.
However, the system disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-082792 requires the provision of additional equipment, i.e. the relay server. Moreover, the relay server merely relays commands and is incapable of exercising flexible control over operating instructions from the management server, e.g. alleviating the load on the network by performing the issuance of commands from the management server in an efficient manner.